Full-length practice tests are the best way to get acclimated to the timing and question formats you'll encounter on the AP Human Geography exam. They'll also help you figure out where you need to put in additional study time to improve your scores.
In this article, we'll give you links to all the best practice tests available for AP Human Geography, including full official tests, full unofficial tests, and mini unofficial quizzes that test specific parts of the curriculum.
Official AP Human Geography Practice Tests
Official practice tests are the best materials to use in preparation for any standardized test, including AP Human Geography. You can be confident that the difficulty level of the questions is on par with what you'll see on the real test, which means that you'll be able to estimate your score pretty accurately.
This is in contrast to many unofficial practice materials, which can be either hit or miss in terms of their predictive value for the exam. Practice tests that were not created by the College Board might have questions that are phrased or formatted differently, or are too easy or too hard.
Unfortunately, there are no official AP Human Geography practice tests available. That said, the College Board does offer many prep materials, just not in the form of full-length tests.
Here are the best practice resources we could find for official AP Human Geography questions.
Official AP Human Geography Exam Page
Although the College Board website does not offer any full-length released exams, its AP Human Geography page still offers lots of great tools and materials—and they're all free! Here's what you can do on the College Board website:
- Look at and practice free-response questions (both 2019 FRQs and older ones—all the way back to 2001—are available)
- View the current scoring guidelines, exam description, and topic breakdowns
- Read past student responses to free-response questions
- Get College Board-approved study tips
AP Classroom
Available through the College Board website, AP Classroom is a relatively new innovation that lets AP teachers keep track of their students' progress by sending them practice questions. If you're in a class that's making use of this option online, you'll definitely benefit from this extra practice!
AP Human Geography Course and Exam Descriptions
The 2020 AP Human Geography Course and Exam Description—which has been fully updated for the new 2020 format of the exam—contains 15 sample multiple-choice questions and two free-response questions; you'll also get a score guide with answers to the multiple-choice questions.
Additionally, we managed to track down the 2015 AP Human Geography Course Description, which has 23 multiple-choice questions and six free-response questions. Note that these questions are not aligned to the new format of the exam, so keep this in mind as you practice.
Authenti City is a great place. The people are so honest, and their practice tests are the best you can get anywhere. Wouldn't recommend it as a vacation destination, though. You will not be able to escape from reality.
Unofficial AP Human Geography Practice Tests
While official AP Human Geography resources are limited, there are many more unofficial practice tests and quizzes available to you in various forms. These materials can be useful, but you should still avoid taking them completely at face value.
We'll list full practice test resources first and then give you some sites offering short AP quizzes on specific Human Geography topics.
Note: Most resources have still not been updated to reflect the changes in format to the new 2020 AP Human Geography exam, so you'll need to tailor your resources slightly to make them closer to the current test structure. Usually, this means just skipping 15 multiple-choice questions, and making sure that you're timing yourself according to the current time limits.
3 Top Resources for Full-Length AP Human Geography Practice Tests
Below are three unofficial resources for full AP Human Geography practice tests.
#1: REA Practice Exam 1
The Research & Education Association (REA) offers a full practice test for AP Human Geography in roughly the same format as that of the real test (though it hasn't been updated for the 2020 exam format, so you can essentially skip 15 of the multiple-choice questions.)
The questions are solid replicas of what you'll see on the exam. This free PDF also includes helpful answer explanations.
#2: Varsity Tutors Diagnostic Tests
A big name in test prep, Varsity Tutors offers four AP Human Geography diagnostic tests, with 75 questions each (multiple choice only). Again, since these tests haven't been updated for the new 2020 format of the exam, you can skip (or at least not worry about) 15 questions.
The tests have automatic scoring, and each one is given a preliminary difficulty level rating. Varsity Tutors also has tons of mini practice quizzes listed by concept if you want to practice topic-specific questions, as well as flashcards that will help you learn all the terminology for this course.
The best part is that this website provides these tests for free!
#3: Review Books
Don't forget about the practice tests available to you in AP Human Geography review books. Most books offer at least two full-length AP practice tests. Read our article on the best review books for AP Human Geography to get a sense of which ones might fit your studying needs.
That said, The Princeton Review has a great AP Human Geography test prep book that features six practice tests, and online extras, as does Barron’s.
Short Quizzes on Specific AP Human Geography Concepts and Regions
Full-length practice tests can be pretty hard to track down for AP Human Geography. Fortunately, many sites offer short quizzes on specific geography topics and regions.
Albert Practice Questions
Albert offers free AP Human Geography questions on every topic covered by the AP class and categorizes them by difficulty level. The site keeps a running tally of how many questions you've answered correctly in the easy, medium, and hard categories. It's also one of the few sites that has updated its Human Geography content for the new test format.
4Tests.com Quizzes
This site offers a free 50-question practice exam for AP Human Geography. I'd use this test as a checkpoint—once you get about halfway through your prep, you can take this test to gauge your progress.
CrackAP.com Practice Tests
CrackAP is an excellent resource, offering more than two dozen realistic AP Human Geography quizzes, most with around 15 questions each. Every question is similar to what you will see on the real test, with five answer choices labeled A-E.
You can even download PDFs of some quizzes to take them on paper (as you will on test day).
SoftSchools Practice Quizzes
SoftSchools offers a series of 10-question practice quizzes on each topic. They're great for brief review sessions!
Chapter Quizzes for Human Geography: Landscapes of Human Activities, 11th Edition
With this site, you can select a chapter from the navigation bar on the left and scroll down to find a link to its corresponding multiple-choice quiz. These quizzes are helpful for review, even if your AP class isn't using this particular textbook.
Sheppard Software Geography Games
On the AP Human Geography exam, you'll need to cite specific examples for the free-response questions; moreover, many multiple-choice questions ask about particular areas of the world. This website provides fun exercises that will help you learn exactly where everything is.
You can progress through tutorial, beginner, and advanced levels in various activities that test your knowledge of the political and geographic divisions that exist within each continent.
Study.com Prep Quiz
Study.com offers quick exam prep for the AP Human Geography test. What's nice about this one is that it has a timer built into the web page, so you can pace yourself as you move through the quiz.
This site offers seven free practice tests covering each of the sections you'll see on the AP Human Geography exam. Since these are broken up into topics, you can use these practice tests to help improve your weakest subject areas.
Practice Quiz
Practicequiz.com features 70 free practice questions, and lets you choose how you want to do them. You can opt for a daily question, answer them in test mode, or choose study mode, which allows you to see the answer and an explanation after each question.
More of us need to take these geography quizzes so people stop coming out with depressing surveys concluding that 75% of Americans think Australia is in Europe. (I made up that statistic, but it might as well be real!)
How to Use AP Human Geography Practice Tests
Here, we explain how you can use these practice tests for review at different stages in the school year as you get closer and closer to the AP Human Geography exam.
1st Semester: Take Practice Tests as Review for In-Class Assessments
During your first semester, you won't have gotten through enough of the curriculum to take full-length AP Human Geography practice tests yet. What you can do is take shorter quizzes that are specific to the topics you've already learned.
Make use of sites that divide up questions by subject, such as Albert and CrackAP. You can also practice writing answers to free-response questions that pertain to the topics your class has covered.
2nd Semester: Start Preparing for the Test
When you're midway through your second semester, you can start preparing for the AP test more directly.
Take a full-length practice test and score it so you can get a better sense of your knowledge and abilities. You can use one of the practice tests listed in the unofficial test section for this step, since there isn't a full-length official test available anywhere.
After you take your practice Human Geography test, revisit all the questions you missed, taking note of their content. Doing this will help you see which areas you need to study more and which you've already mastered.
Once you've spent at least a couple of hours reviewing, take another practice test to reassess your score level. If you see some improvement, you can either repeat the process and aim higher or decide you're satisfied with your current score level.
If not, you should think about what went wrong in reviewing your mistakes. Did you only look them over haphazardly? Was the environment too distracting? It's okay to change your approach if you're not getting the results you want.
What If Your Class Is Only One Semester Long?
At some schools, AP Human Geography is a semester-long class. If this is the case for you, much of the same advice still applies—it'll just take place on a slightly different timeline.
If you take the class your first semester, you'll have a significant chunk of time between the end of the course and the actual exam. This can be a big advantage if you use your time wisely and avoid procrastinating (which you will have to watch out for if you're very busy with your second-semester classes).
You will be able to start the second semester study process outlined above as soon as you finish the class. There will be plenty of time to take practice tests after your class has covered all the material, so it will be easier to get an accurate reading on your score level before the AP test.
If you take AP Human Geography second semester, the review process should be essentially the same as if it were a year-long class. The first semester advice will apply to the first half of your second semester, and the second semester advice will apply to the second half.
You can afford to progress at a more leisurely pace in your studying if you take the class during your first semester because you have a few months that you can devote to preparing for the AP test.
Wrap-Up: Prepping With AP Human Geography Practice Tests
Official practice testing materials for AP Human Geography are somewhat scarce. By far the best questions to use in your prep are those released by the College Board. But you can also use unofficial practice tests and quizzes at any time throughout the school year to practice more topic-specific questions for in-class assessments and prepare for the AP test as a whole.
Be sure to reflect carefully on your answers to every Human Geography practice test so you can assess where you went wrong and revisit relevant content. Practice tests should play a key role in your review for any AP exam. If you treat them seriously and pay attention to what they tell you about your level of preparation, you're bound to do well on test day!
What's Next?
Are you an intrepid AP pioneer navigating the treacherous waters of this course solo? Read our comprehensive seven-step guide to self-studying for AP tests!
It's critical to know when all your AP tests are happening so you can prepare appropriately. Check out the upcoming AP test dates along with expert tips for making it through the test period with your sanity intact.
If you're applying to highly competitive colleges, you might be thinking about preparing for SAT Subject Tests in addition to AP tests. Find out how AP exams and Subject Tests differ from each other and which scores will make more of an impact on your admissions chances.
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Samantha is a blog content writer for PrepScholar. Her goal is to help students adopt a less stressful view of standardized testing and other academic challenges through her articles. Samantha is also passionate about art and graduated with honors from Dartmouth College as a Studio Art major in 2014. In high school, she earned a 2400 on the SAT, 5's on all seven of her AP tests, and was named a National Merit Scholar.
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